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Let’s have a look at the way in which Nicol hits her backhand shot.

She’s a very coached player and does much of her squash in fairly textbook fashion. From this she sets a great example for anyone watching.

Firstly look at the space she leaves herself here. It is something all coaches talk about, and you can see a real effort here from her to give herself the space.

Nicol is really flexible – I don’t know whether it is something she works on or something that is natural to her, but her flexibility allows her this fantastic turn. From here we can see all of her back, and her racket head is held fairly high. Her elbow is back but pulled in creating a very large wind up.

This is the basis of where she generates her tremendous power considering her slight frame.

You can see the weight transfer from back to front foot, and as she does this her unwind starts, releasing to hit the ball very conventionally with an open racket face, just in front of her right leg.

Her extension through the line of the ball is accentuated (another sign of a coached player who takes her technique very seriously), with the racket head finishing high and to the front wall.

The one downside of this technique with the big wind up, is that there is a long way to unwind to get back down to the contact point. The tendency might be to be a little late on occasions and to block it onto the sidewall.

Pretty much all of her swing you could teach to any player and be very happy that you were doing a good job, but the huge turn particularly suits Nicol in that she hasn’t got the size of some of her contemporaries and can use her flexibility to more than make up for it.